1. Technical Field
The invention relates to the organization and sorting of electronic mail in a computer environment. More particularly, the invention relates to the organization and retrieval of electronic mail via an automatic search mechanism that requires minimal additional storage and interaction by the user.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The popularity of electronic mail (e-mail) has grown dramatically in recent years. This growth has increased the complexity of the user's ability to manage the e-mail that he receives. The expanding volume and uses of e-mail require the user to become more organized. Typically, e-mail messages have an absolute location in most e-mail products. The e-mail messages normally reside in specific folders. Users often create a complex organization of folders to handle the large amount of e-mail they receive.
The user will typically file a message in a folder or sub-folder. The location of the message may later be forgotten by the user, resulting in messages that are essentially lost.
One solution to this problem of lost messages is a search utility that is provided by many e-mail products. These search utilities come in the form of a single search dialog. Users search for messages based on the attributes of a message. For example, the user remembers who sent him an e-mail and uses the search utility to search through all of the "From:" fields of his e-mail messages. The search can be conducted across all folders, allowing the user to find the desired message regardless of the absolute location of that message.
However, searching for messages in a search dialog can be inconvenient and difficult for many reasons:
Search criteria are difficult to remember. The specific criteria is easily forgotten if the user does not perform the same search regularly, thereby hampering the user's ability to consistently obtain the same search results. PA1 Having access to a single search dialog means the user can only perform one search at a time. The user may want to retain previous search criteria and results. However, if there is only a single search dialog, the user is forced to overwrite previous searches as new searches are performed. PA1 Entering search criteria is a tedious and time-consuming process. Search dialogues require the user to enter the search criteria each time a search is made. Specifying a search once and later modifying it when required is a more efficient way to work. PA1 Users may want continual access to the search results without having to specify the search each time they choose to view the results. PA1 Most mail applications require that messages have an absolute location. Messages exist in a specific folder. The user must copy the message to have the same message exist in different folders, which wastes disk space and can cause synchronization problems. PA1 It is difficult for users to quickly change the organization of their messages to suit their needs. If the user is assigned to a new project, he may want to have a single folder containing all of the mail that he has ever received from those coworkers who are also assigned to the project. This process could take a very long time if it entails finding and moving a large number of messages.
Another solution is the mail filter. Mail filters also address the problem of receiving too many messages. Filters are a user defined set of rules or scripts which are used to organize incoming mail messages by filing them into predefined folders.
Referring to FIG. 1, a typical example of a mail filter 101 is shown. In this example, the mail filter rule is "sender contains maddux@bravos.com." The address criteria "maddux@bravos.com" 107 is entered by the user. The search rule specified is to check the sender field 103 to see if it contains 105 the address criteria 107 of the incoming message. A predefined action is initiated if the incoming mail message matches the criteria specified in the rule. The action in this example is to move the message to the folder 104 with the specified name of inbox 106. Filters are activated upon receipt of a message. Therefore, this approach is effective at handling e-mail that is just being received, but ineffective at handling mail messages that have already been received and filed.
It would be advantageous to provide an electronic mail search device that does not waste disk space by unnecessarily copying files and acts on e-mail either upon receipt or after receipt. It would further be advantageous to provide an electronic mail search device that is easily operated and maintained by users.